Meet ‘me-too’ Munda

Arjun Munda

New Delhi, July 22: Nitish Kumar, you have company. Arjun Munda also wants special status for his state.

The Jharkhand chief minister, while in New Delhi for a day, took a leaf out of the Bihar chief minister’s book and demanded special status for Jharkhand.

Speaking to the media after meeting BJP president Nitin Gadkari, Munda said industrial giants Tata Steel, CIL, and DVC, which operate in the state, remit taxes at their Calcutta headquarters, which deprive Jharkhand of its revenue.

Nitish had summed up Bihar’s chief sulk — that after Jharkhand was carved from the mother state, Bihar had lost its mineral wealth, only to be left with baalu (sand) and aaloo (potatoes).

Munda tried to take the steam out of Nitish’s baalu-aaloo argument with a smoky metaphor that may tug at tribal heartstrings. “We are a state that produces coal. The adivasis have inhaled the fumes of mining that have burnt their lungs. What have we got in return,” he asked here today, to counter Bihar’s decade-old grouse that the family jewels had gone to Jharkhand.

According to the Thirteenth Finance Commission, special category states are those with “hilly terrain, sparsely populated habitation and high transport costs leading to high delivery cost of public services.”

Munda feels Jharkhand makes the cut, and should enjoy financial concessions that come with the status. While regular states get 70 per cent of central assistance as grants and the rest as a loan, special states get 90 per cent as grant.

Jharkhand already has 14 of the 60 districts across the country which get assistance from Integrated Action Plan under the Backward Regions Grant Fund programme.

There are currently 11 special states including the seven Northeast states and Sikkim, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh.